


Communication Breakdown

by getluckywithbucky



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, M/M, Misunderstandings, Panic Attacks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4556655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getluckywithbucky/pseuds/getluckywithbucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky, as Dum Dum, Morita, and Toro insist, is dramatic as hell and definitely overreacting to this whole Steve Rogers thing. Bucky thinks they're wrong and that since the day Steve basically forced him to move out of their shared dorm, that the shorter man is definitely out to get him.</p><p>Or, Bucky is overdramatic and Steve is misunderstood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Communication Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt by tumblr user [ryuugazakireii](http://ryuugazakireii.tumblr.com/), who wanted:  
> "Steve is a total super nerd college kid studying criminal justice and political science, minor in sociology. (this isnt relevant to the story really just kinda character building ya know) and Bucky is the frat guy that Steve shares a room with. They are only sophomores so they have to share a room and Bucky just HAS to have at least 3 'bros' over at once and of course Steve is a busy guy so he has to study a lot and the library is too cold and Bucky will not SHUT UP and so Steve blows up on him in their room with his friends there and Bucky just INSTANTLY falls for him bc holy shit this nerd is tearing him down with more swears than even HE’S heard before and you know, the rest is up to you!"

The thing is, Bucky knows he’s not a bad guy. He can be loud and playful, a little over-enthusiastic about things, but he doesn’t go out of his way to be an asshole. He holds doors for strangers. He volunteers at homeless shelters when he can. He walks his female classmates home at night when they’re nervous about trekking across campus when the library closes at 3 am. Hell, he’s never missed a class, never made less than an A on an assignment in his two years of college.

So he knows he’s not a bad person. And the thing is, he’s pretty popular in his fraternity and on campus. He sponsors a couple freshmen and it’s not weird for him to have people over in the dorm room he shares with Steve Rogers. And yeah, they can get loud sometimes, but it’s a Friday night and Steve is  _never_  in their room on Friday nights.

Steve Rogers isn’t a bad person either, even if he has tipped his chair over in his hurry to spin around and rip Bucky a new one. Bucky can hear Dum Dum behind him trying not to crack up laughing, and Bucky gets that, he really does.

Because Steve is  _tiny_. He’s 5 foot nothing, skinny as hell, and maybe weighs as much wet pair of jeans. He can’t help but think that Steve looks like a pissed off chihuahua barking at a much bigger dog. The most amazing part, Bucky figures, is the fact that he’s actually  _intimidating_.

“Look, you selfish fucking douche, I’m had it up to fucking  _here_  with your bullshit.” Steve snarls, one hand raised all the way above his head as he glares at Bucky. Morita and Toro do let out little snorts of laughter, just loud enough that Steve rounds on them, “Get the fuck out! I’m so fucking tired of this shit, out!”

It definitely shouldn’t be attractive the way Steve’s face gets red and a little splotchy, the way his hands don’t shake at all when he points towards the door with a single long, thin finger. It definitely shouldn’t be attractive how his already deep voice seems to have dropped an octave in his anger. Except that it is attractive, the way his normally perfectly put together blond hair falls over his forehead and the way his cornflower blue eyes seem so fucking big despite being so narrowed.

Morita, Dum Dum, and Toro are smart enough to book it, and Steve turns all of that angry attention back on Bucky. Bucky can’t help it - he cowers a little.

“I don’t fucking care what you do when I’m not here. Have a goddamn orgy for all I care. But when we’re both in this piece of shit dorm room, treat it with some fucking respect, you self-absorbed fucktruck!” Steve’s barely 6 inches away, emphasizing his colorful name-calling with prods to Bucky’s chest, “I don’t do this shit to you, I don’t have all my fucking friends over at once and fucking  _screech_  when you’re trying to get your work done!”

And yeah, Bucky’s never been yelled at quite like this, and if it was anyone else, he’d probably be fighting back, but Steve’s so fucking gorgeous when he’s angry and Bucky is 100% aware of how fucked up that is.

Steve takes a few heaving breathes, pulls out his inhaler and takes a few puffs, and Bucky, god help him, feels like a bad person.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be in.”

“Seriously, you didn’t think I’d be in  _my own damn dorm room at 10 at night_?” Steve rolls his eyes, turning from Bucky and finally righting the chair he’d knocked over. “Could you be any more inconsiderate? Is that a requirement with you fucking frat bro assholes?”

Bucky scowls. Cute or not, Bucky’s not exactly willing to have his entire character shit on. “You’re never here on Friday nights! We’ve been roommates for like a year and you’ve never been in the room on a Friday! Shit, we were in here before you even came in!”

Steve drops into his chair, glaring at Bucky, “Oh, so that means you can just -”

“Oh my god, Steve. Shut up for a second, Christ. Like, I fucking get it, you hate me. But Jesus wept, I’m not the one being a self-absorbed fucking punk right now.”

Steve’s mouth snaps shut and his angry flush deepens - Bucky feels a little pride in how embarrassed he looks. He snatches up his bag, shoving his mechanical engineering text book and laptop into it. “You can have the damn room, Steve. I won’t fucking bother you in your _own damn dorm room_. Have a nice fucking night.”

He hefts his bag over his should and slams the door behind him.

The worst part of kicking yourself out of your dorm, Bucky decides as he crashes out at a table in one of the study rooms on the 6th floor of his building, is the fact that inevitably he ends up remembering all the other homework he could be doing but left in the room. He takes his phone out.

To Steve:  _Let me know when your highness is amenable so I can enter your sacred domain again for the rest of my homework._

He doesn’t expect a reply, and he doesn’t get one.

Not exactly.

He’s worked through three pages of bullshit equations when he hears the door creak open behind him. He doesn’t bother to look, probably someone who didn’t see him through the window and who’ll leave on their own. The door creaks back shut and he’s left in silence. Figures. Bucky erases his last answer, frustrated at how off it was.

Steve had no right to get pissed over something so fucking small. And yeah, Bucky thought he was cute when he was mad - hell, thought he was cute when he wasn’t mad, when he was just listening to his shitty hipster music or drawing. Bucky can be a big enough person to admit that he’s been blind as hell to his crush on his roommate. But oh how true colors shine through. His eraser rips through the paper and he groans.

The floorboards behind him creak. “Uh, Bucky?”

Bucky groans again, banging his head down on to the table, “Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Who’d I fucking kill to deserve this. What, you here to yell at me some more? Didn’t finish telling me how shitty I am?”

When he turns, he’s expecting Steve to still be puffed up in righteous anger. Instead, he just looks small. His shoulders are hunched, hands shoved in the pockets of too-big sweat pants and he’s not wearing shoes, just a pair of think fuzzy socks. He’s not flushed anymore, all the anger drained somewhere else and Bucky almost feels bad for him. Almost.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and his voice doesn’t match his body language at all, because it’s loud and firm, not muttered or embarrassed. Bucky raises his eyebrows, and Steve does start to turn red again. “I shouldn’t have exploded at you like that.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Bucky turns back to his homework as Steve shuffles on his feet behind him.

Steve sighs and comes around the table to plop down in the chair across from him. “It’s not an excuse but I’ve been so stressed over finals coming up. You didn’t deserve that.”

Bucky drops his pencil and scrubs a hand over his face. He was pissed earlier, but now he’s just tired. His crush on Steve is stupid, anyway - Steve made it clear what he really thinks, Bucky figures, so he may as well just get it out of the way and cut his loses before it gets any worse. “Look, dude, it’s whatever. You don’t gotta apologize to me. I get it. I’m just some frat bro asshole, right? Not like I’ve got a single decent bone in my body. You must hate having to live with me.”

When he looks up, Steve’s face has fallen into an expression Bucky can’t quite place. It’s like he wants to say something, but the words don’t want to come out. Bucky figures that’s a good thing; he doubts anything Steve would say to him is good. He offers a wan smile, and if it’s as hollow as it feels he doesn’t care.

He packs up his things with Steve watching him and feels his eyes on his back as he leaves the room.

It only takes a few minutes for Bucky to pack up his toiletries, books, and clothes into his mismatched luggage, and he’s out of the room and heading to Toro’s apartment off campus before Steve gets back from the study room.

He sends one text to Steve.

To Steve:  _I’ll get the rest of my stuff tomorrow at 2._

 

When he gets there the next day with Dum Dum and Toro in tow, Steve’s nowhere to be found.

Bucky can’t really shove down his disappointment.

 

On Monday, Bucky officially puts in a room relocation request. The office can’t do anything so late in the semester, but they promise that in the room lottery for the Fall, he’ll be placed with someone else. It’s good enough. He falls back into his studies and tries to shove Steve Rogers completely from his mind.

For the most part, it works. He’d blocked and deleted Steve’s number. They don’t have any classes in common – Steve’s a social science guy (anthropology maybe, but Bucky isn’t exactly sure) and Bucky’s an engineering major – and they’re never in the canteen at the same time for any of their meals. Sometimes, though, Bucky’ll see Steve leaving the library or coming out of the art building and he’ll walk a little faster or duck behind someone so the blond won’t spot him. The last thing Bucky wants is for the other man to see him.

And it’s so fucking stupid, if he really thinks about it. They were good roommates – neither of them messy, respectful of each other’s space, but the thing was they almost never spoke, never really became friends and as much as Bucky didn’t really ever get to know Steve, Steve never bothered to try and get to know him either. Just jumped to conclusions about him based on his friends, on his fraternity.

The frat keeps him busy, though, once finals are done and the semester ends. Bucky’s glad it’s over, proud to have managed to pull off another 4.0 semester, but the summer is always the worst because it gives him too much time to think.

But in the summer, they have a bunch of charity events and Bucky loves it, loves being able to spend his time being productive and helpful. Which is how he ends up standing outside the public library passing out information and accepting donations for Planned Parenthood. It’s the first time they’ve really worked with PP, and Bucky’s excited about it.

Until he sees that familiar blond head coming up the sidewalk towards where he and Toro are stationed.

Toro rolls his eyes at the look of horror that crosses over Bucky’s face and his muttered, “Shit, shit. I’m not here.”

Bucky tries not to actually run off, but when Steve’s voice calls his name out behind him, that’s exactly what he fucking does.

Yeah, he may not be a bad person, but he never said he wasn’t a fucking coward.

When he came back ten minutes later, Steve is nowhere to be seen and Toro isn’t very impressed. “Why don’t you just, I don’t know, talk to him? Seems like a cool guy when he’s not screaming at us.”

“Because he hates me. He probably wants to yell at me some more. Maybe I didn’t clean my sink well enough, I don’t fucking know.” Bucky drops into the metal folding chair and shuffles some of the fliers. He smiles at a mother and her child as they walk by their table.

Toro waits until they’re out of earshot before he picks the conversation back up, “That’s not the vibe I got from him at all, Buck. He looked sad.”

“Yeah, sad he didn’t get to tear me down some more.”

Toro doesn’t say anything else about it, but he gives one final eyeroll that Bucky’s pretty sure could be seen from space.

 

It’s September when Bucky sees Steve again, and it’s like the shorter man is _actively seeking him out_. At first he thinks it’s just a coincidence that he keeps seeing Steve around, but he realizes that it’s definitely not when he sees Steve in the engineering building.

Suddenly, Steve’s everywhere and Bucky doesn’t fucking understand.

“I don’t think he’s gonna be happy until I fucking leave school altogether.” Bucky’s been working in silence with Morita and Dum Dum all afternoon, the first assignments of the semester all falling due in the same week. His hand is beyond cramped from scribbling equations for hours and of course when he looks out the window at the frat house the first thing he sees is Steve walking by.

“Jesus, Buck. This is fucking ridiculous. He’s not out to get you, man.” Morita wads up and throws a piece of paper at him. “Seriously, he’s in my French class and he’s damn nice. Apologized for the whole screaming thing, always shares his food.”

“You’re consorting with the enemy. ‘Course he’s nice to you – he doesn’t fucking hate you.” Bucky glares down at the table, picking at the finish, “He hates me, okay? He wants to make me miserable.”

Dum Dum snorts, “You’re damn dramatic, you know that, Barnes? I’ve seen drama majors less dramatic than you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” It doesn’t help that Steve’s fucking gorgeous and, really, Bucky doesn’t mind seeing him way off in the distance. The stupid fucking crush, he’s loathe to admit, never really faded away and Steve’s weird determination to take away all of his safe places isn’t helping any.

 

Of course, it’s his frat brothers fault, in the end.

Bucky doesn’t drink. It’s not that he’s only 20, but he doesn’t like how it reminds him of things better left forgotten. And his Brothers, they’re great about it – they never pressure him, never mock him. Sure, he’ll have champagne on New Years or a beer on the 4th, but he doesn’t socially drink at parties. He’s the guy who’s always sober and he knows it surprises people.

Like Steve Rogers, for example, who Bucky discovers is also sober at the same stupid Halloween party that Bucky was roped into going to. The same party where Bucky is literally _locked in the basement_ with Steve.

He frantically looks around as Steve stands there staring at him. There’s some small windows about 4 feet off the ground, and he could probably fit through one if he dislocated a shoulder. He knows pounding on the door would be useless, because Toro is an asshole and Bucky will never help him study for a physics exam ever again.

“Bucky.” Steve says from a few feet away, and jesus, when did he move closer?

And Bucky panics, words spilling out and his eyes darting all over the room. He can’t look at Steve, can’t look at this guy who he both wants to punch and kiss, this person who’s literally been making his a fucking paranoid wreck for months. Bucky doesn’t think he’s a bad person, but god he must be to deserve this. “What the hell do you even want from me? Was me moving out not enough? Do you want me to transfer schools, too? I can’t just drop out, I’ve got too much debt, okay? God, I know you think I’m garbage but if you hate me so fucking much, why can’t you just leave me alone?”

And of fucking course he’s shaking, he’s practically shivering out of his shoes, and everything is blurring together and literally nothing makes any sense and _Bucky needs to get away_ , needs to be anywhere but here and he’s already making for the window because dislocating his shoulder sounds so much better than standing in a basement where Steve Rogers is probably going to make him feel like even more shit and he’s scrambling up boxes and about to slam his shoulder against the window when long-fingered hands wrap around his arms and start to pull him back.

“Jesus, Bucky, stop!” and Steve’s touching him and he has nice hands but Bucky doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want Steve anywhere near him because Bucky’s stupid crush won’t fucking go away and if Steve never says anything else to him, Bucky can pretend that Steve doesn’t actually hate him, doesn’t want to tear him down with words. Bucky’s an expert at being torn down with words, years of practice from all angles, never good enough and never cool enough and _aren’t you supposed to be best friends with your college roommate_?

Bucky realizes, distantly, that his vision is blurred because he’s crying, and it’s hard to breath because his chest is tight and isn’t it great that he’s given Steve something else to mock him for. It takes him a minute longer to realize that they’re both on the floor and Steve, skinny little Steve, practically has Bucky in his lap, holding him close and whispering soothing words.

It takes him another minute to realize what Steve’s actually say, “I don’t hate you, I don’t hate you, I never hated you, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.” And that realization only makes Bucky cry harder because nothing makes sense and his head hurts and if Steve doesn’t hate him, then what does that even mean about the last few months.

 

He must have blacked out, because when he comes to he’s in one of the bedrooms at his frat house and Steve is still there, still stroking his hand through Bucky’s hair.

Steve just stares at him, but this time Bucky’s aware enough to know that it’s not the kind of look you give someone you hate. He doesn’t know what it is, if he’s honest. Bucky stares back.

“I’m so sorry, Bucky. I am so, so, sorry.” And honestly, Bucky believes him. “I don’t hate you, okay? I didn’t mean for you to think that, and I’ve been trying to tell you for months but…”

“I blocked your number.” Bucky finishes.

“Yeah. I just… I was unfair and cruel and I wanted to apologize but the words got stuck and…” Steve pauses, looking down at his lap, “You kept saying I hated you and all I could think was that it wasn’t true. I was shocked you’d think that and by the time I realized I needed to fix that, you’d already left. I was too embarrassed to be there when you came to get the rest of your stuff.”

Bucky sits up. He’s exhausted, and it really dawns on him that he had an honest-to-god panic attack over the skinny blond man next to him. Absolute, actual fear over someone that he’s starting to realize isn’t the kind of person to do what Bucky thought he did. “I may have overreacted?”

“I think we both did, honestly. You were right when you said I was the one being selfish. It was your room too, and I just… steamrolled and threw a tantrum. I never wanted you to think I hated you. I don’t.”

They both fall silent, and Bucky watches while Steve chews on his lower lip, an obvious nervous habit that Bucky remembers seeing sometimes when they were both in the dorm room at the same time. “What is it? You look like you wanna say something else.”

Steve doesn’t say anything immediately, ducking his head and fidgeting a little. “To be honest, I, uh, had a huge crush on you. A huge, ridiculous crush. And I was so mad at myself when I ran you off because that’s just like me. Casually ruining everything.”

Bucky blinks, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What?”

“You had a crush on me. When I had a crush on you. We were interested in each other at the same time and _we’re both giant fucking idiots._ ” Bucky bangs his head against the headboard and knows that he’s probably about as red as Steve is slowly turning.

Fuck it, he decides, because enough time has been wasted over stupid avoidable drama.

“Let’s make it up to each other. Go to dinner with me tomorrow?”

Steve beams, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

 

6 months later, Dum Dum tells the story as a cautionary tale to freshman pledges. Bucky’s not sure what Dum Dum’s trying to caution them against, but he doesn’t really care. A date turned into a relationship, and the one thing Bucky and Steve are really great at is communication.

Maybe that’s Dum Dum’s point.


End file.
